Jimmy Merrifield, Virology/Serology Laboratory Technician at University of Georgia (2016-present)

Answered 3 years ago · Author has 280 answers and 747.4K answer views

“...For sake of ease, most would normally say that HD would be referring to 720p, FHD refers to 1080p,”

https://www.androidbeat.com/2019/03/best-galaxy-a50-a30-tips-tricks/ - I checked this article to look at possible video recording tips for my Samsung A50, which is the camera I have chosen to use for the main vlog shot of the mini-doc as the file sizes are a lot more manageable than my Apeman handy camera, which only shoots in wide angle and I wanted the main shot to feel more personal and warmer, which I can achieve with the light settings and framing of the Samsung.

https://itstillworks.com/rules-legal-use-video-surveillance-1801.html - Research into the legalities of using footage of people that I have in my archive. Old bands, other people's recordings of me, recordings and images I have or other people that I plan to use in the documentary. Should I plan to release this for real, which I think I will because of how well the content works to deepen the lore around my music, I will inform everyone whos footage or picture I used in the video 

https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/copyright/images - More research into the legality of using other peoples images.

https://support.switcherstudio.com/en/articles/3065766-camera-goes-in-and-out-of-focus - 

My reason for creating this series of videos is to have “bite-sized” (around a minute or two) educational content that goes to promoting both my music and myself as a teacher in aims of sparking student interest and to create an identity for myself as a guitarist. The videos will be semi-formal in their presentation to make them accessible, fun and easy to watch and give range for re-watching due to the bize-size nature of the video lengths. 

In addition, to aid the release of the EP, I will create a “documentary” style, telling of the story behind the music, where it all came from and how it was conceived to add depth beyond the musical content of the release. 

The documentary will follow a similar vein, promoting the music and myself as a personality. It will act as a more detailed introduction to the album and a bit of a lineage story about my musical journey from starting out to now. I feel it’s important to have a bit of my historical background included as the music is a culmination of all of the things I have learnt as a musician and things present in it how, like my love for riffs and distorted guitars down to my ancient love for VGM (video game music,) and electronic music can be heard on the record. Showing where those things come from, and for how long they have been there, will go to give me authenticity in my convictions of my music. In short, all the inspirations and assets of me as a guitarist are present in this music. It’s all been about getting back to my roots and my roots, and everything I have learnt along the way, are in this EP. So to speak of where it all came from makes sense for both the story arc of the documentary and to the relevance that my journey has had on shaping who I am now. 

The length of each bit of content will depend on the length of the mini-documentary as I will need to edit down a 28min interview with myself and figure out how much I have left to cover in the other areas. 

Mini Documentary - telling the story and development of the EP -  “Reach” - Artist introduction. - YouTube: 20/25mins

Licks and Guitar Concepts Series - A series of videos showcasing a number (short with a small explanation) of licks with some explanation of what is going on in them. YouTube and Instagram:5 mins

Short excerpts for socials (Insat), longer versions of the videos with in-depth explanation will be kept for Patreon type subscription or YouTube. 

Requires doing smaller edits from the main long form one. 

YouTube is the easiest way to showcase, share and store videos, and being that I have a number of different lengths and types of video content in the works, it works well as a central hub to house my videos from being that it’s not restricted by time limits (but also beneficial for the use of #shorts for the lick series). 

Instagram will be used in the same way as the #shorts on YT and be used to promote material, i.e. trailers/snippets and also as a secondary place to launch the guitar lick series as the “bize-size” nature of the videos lends well to Instagrams format and ensures an amount of replayability due to this. 

Where these licks will be shared to Instagram, I feel the production value needs to be of a certain level, by that, I mean well recorded audio synced to good/decent quality videos. 

Including the transcriptions onscreen I will be able to add another level of production value that can also benefit the user and lend, again, into the replayability factor if people wanted to learn from the video.

I want it to be a way to talk about my journey, but also show my personality a bit by including humorous types of editing and making things fun and interesting and not just a dry 20+ minute video of me talking about myself. 

Whilst I almost feel the idea of doing this myself is kinda pretentious, it comes from an idea a friend and I had a while back to do a documentary about the E.P that would work for both of our portfolios, him being the film-maker and getting to practise his craft and me practising mine and getting some additional content around my music. We have since fallen out, and after a first try at the documentary that was deemed not workable, I was unable to finish the project with him and so chose to create something myself as an adaptation on the original premise.

I scripted and story-boarded the idea and had a framework of what I wanted it to be about, which was the story behind my moving away from Brighton to Hastings, a place I had never really lived before, and to tell of how special it was in moulding the process I have now for writing and recording music. 

Unsure how I would convey that and not wanting to really sit on the topic too much, as it’s quite personal and wouldn’t be appropriate to talk about, I don't feel, despite how important that whole time for me was. It just didn’t seem right and without another person behind the camera, I felt I wouldn’t know how to even approach it from a visual aspect putting things to the script and storyboard I had. So the idea to make it more of a journey of “everything” came as a way to explain that this music is a way of getting back to my roots, and that involving the parts of my past that lead me to here, that are still relevant now, would make for more interesting and more appropriate content. 

All I needed to figure out now was how I was going to tell the story and shoot it. I went out and gathered a load of expositional stuff from Hastings, to try and mimic the vibe of the original documentary idea, and then have a monologue on top that would be my voice telling the story, but realised that I wasn’t in any of the footage and without someone to do the filming I was stuck behind the camera trying my amateurish best to film things that are interesting or relevant. Feeling that this would have been a lot of nature/expositional stuff and very little of myself. I realised that I could get the same effect with the monologue talking about the events by recording a vlog style interview of myself telling the story and then cutting in inserts or relevant bits of footage as I told the story. 

I was inspired by my friend's band, Azure, who did a video about their recent DIY music video escapades and I got inspired by the format of that video and realised it could work well with how I was going to tell my story

So when it came to the main shot I knew I wasn't going to be able to remember a script and decided that improvising, which is what my music’s all about, was going to be the best way to approach the Vlog. After a couple takes I realised that there were some very good points made in the lineage of the story, so drafted a cheat sheet from those early takes that could guide me and I could just edit out the parts where I forgot where I was. This ended up being the way to go forwards and I managed to get a take I was happy with in just 3 goes. The process was quite taxing as talking for nearly 30 mins straight can get quite mentally exhausting. And whilst I wasn’t 100% happy with the lighting in the final version, I felt the subject matter was concise and I just wanted to have it filmed in some capacity so I could begin editing, which is a whole other situation that I will go into a bit later on.

After looking over the first take of the Vlog part of the video, there were a couple of things that I noticed could do with some adjusting. One being the amount of natural light coming through the window, which was blowing out the shot a bit, particularly on my body where it was coming in the most. Definitely using this natural light will be a good idea (I’ve noted I can get a good natural light in my room from about 7-11am, which is when I will shoot the video.) The second issue being the focus going in and out, almost like a zooming effect, increasingly more as the video went on. I will look into why this happens and try to adjust it before I do a 2nd take. (bits in Bold are so I remember to adjust and research these)

I feel the framing of the shot is good, it could maybe show off more of my studio gear to align with the idea of showing off how far i’ve come since starting composing the music to having it mostly done, but the overall busy and nosiness of the colours and structure, I feel is a visual representation of the music itself, and is reminiscent of the comfort you would find in a Studio Ghibli film, like Whisper Of The Heart (examples can be found in my documentary stimulus and case study section), which always conjure those feelings of nostalgia, which the subject matter of the video reflects, and is very much a vibe I personally enjoy and by not trying to mask that I present myself as more authentic. So by making my desk and everything around it tidy it helps the busy-ness of the background seem more intentional as the presentation is clean and considered. 

In hindsight, having the main vlog shot taken of me in the place that I have been working from that now houses all the new bits of gear I’ve acquired in order to make the music happen, makes the most sense in terms of the story and showing how far it's come because it talks to the audience from the perspective of the “now me,” the me that lived through all the experiences of getting this music together, who has developed along the way and is sitting in front of you now telling you about the journey they’ve taken to get to this point. 

I do feel it recaps a little too much of my history, but this can all be worked out in editing. 

As mentioned, I will do a second take, this time adjusting this things in bold above and also adding a 2nd camera to help give a contrast in angles, but also so I have something I can cut to if the Samsung starts doing the “in and out of focus thing.” I have done some research into why the camera does this, and it seems to be due to an auto-focus function of the camera, which I can’t find in the phones menu of how to disable. The phone, unfortunately, has had some issues over the years, stuff like not allowing me to use the wide angle or use the stabiliser mode without causing the camera to crash. This is likely due to a loose connection somewhere inside the phone, from the very brief research I did into fixing the problem a while back. But seeing as I’m not a smartphone engineer, it all seemed too complex for me and I will one day, when funds are surplus, to get it fixed at a shop as this will allow me to continue using the phone’s camera, which is decent enough for now, and can act as a secondary camera in the future when I choose to invest in another. This said, I do have my Apeman (a gopro type camera) which has a decent picture, but is constantly in wide angle with no function to zoom, and I feel for the main Interview shot the Samsung offers better framing and is more personal, where as the Apeman feels more clinical, like a surveillance camera. So I will, instead, use the Apeman for my secondary camera, giving me something to cut between for varying shots to make the video more engaging and less static. 

To stop my computer screens from going onto the screen saver, I’ve chosen to conduct the interview with a 2nd computer mouse in my hand that will be out of shot and keep in my lap so that the mouse gets a bit of movement every now and then. I tried it in the first take and it's not noticeable that I’m holding anything and it keeps the shot consistent should I choose to edit anything in. Not that it makes a huge amount of difference, as it doesn't really take away from what I’m talking about, but I feel it adds a level of consideration and continuity to the video overall which hopefully adds to the production value.

For the audio I am choosing to use another Samsung phone I use for work, to record the voice audio and I can blend that with the audio from the other camera, to get a thicker sound for my voice. I could use the interface and microphone behind me, but I really didn't want to have to keep turning around to look at stuff, as the process of getting the camera’s set up in the same spot, with the same aperture, doing it all on my phone, is just quite tedious enough already, so by having everything in front of me, the 2 cameras and the phone for audio, I am able to simply the process which helps as I feel I will need to do another couple takes before I decide which one I want to use.

To try and help streamline each take to be more or less the same in terms of the narrative structure, I will listen through to the takes I already have and form a timeline that I can look at to help keep me on track. This is just so I cover everything I want to cover in each take, so that when it comes to choosing takes, I’m not torn between choosing because of having got it in one take and not getting it in another. This is why the clothing I wear now should stay consistent from take to take, so I can pool from the other edits, if they work (the 2nd take I forgot to have the mouse in my hand so the screen saver went off.) 

To explain the logic behind my outfit ties into my brand image of wanting to wear comfortable but semi-fashionable clothes, choosing sweatpants for the comfortable factor, and the tunic to represent a kind of femininity that I think my character possesses. The beanie, whilst being designer, covers my current hair-style which is unkempt and overgrown to say the least. So to save on money right now, and because I haven't found a person I trust to cut my hair yet, this just solves the issue for now and definitely plays into the playful nature of my character and the comfiness thing which stems from the idea of “freedom” which is a bit part of the band/project’s ethos, brought to life by the compositional choices I make and the space for improvisation that exists within the music. This balance between structure and freedom is very much a theme I like, and have explored, in the writing of this music and I feel the video, although being very minimal and simplistic, gets that theme across even if it’s mostly subtextually. 

With regards to lighting, having picked up a few lighting tips during my time at WaterBear, specifically from the content creation module content, on the types of lights used and ways you can position them to give you greater depth in my videos. The set up I went with, mostly because it's the light available to me, was to have my main room light, which is a fairly bright halogen lamp that was to work as my main spot light. 

The 2nd was the use of natural light, because 1) its free, and 2) my room just so happens to get a nice bit of light through it for most of the day, more intense in the mornings and dimming down towards noon, which I feel gave the best type of light as it isn't as intense and light my face more without blowing the shot out like it did in the first take. The natural light also goes to make the shot feel more natural, which is the kind of light I wanted to use, nothing colourful as the background is already colourful enough. I wanted people to experience the lighting I have in my work space. I also used the curtains to direct the light more towards me. 

The last light is just my desk light which serves as a backlight to give me that extra bit of depth in the shot. I have included a rough diagram below to show the set up.

Upon recording the 2nd take of the video, I found myself emotionally compromised, that’s Vulcan for saying “crying,” by, I guess, talking about the things I discovered whilst writing the music and how emotional my time in Hastings was whilst writing it. It happened a bit on the first take, me getting emotional about receiving the help that I have from the people that I have. A kind of gratitude that I’m not strong enough to convey, so it comes out in tears. If this happens in future I can always edit things out, as both camera’s should have plenty of footage to catch the whole interview even if I do take a minute or 2 to compose myself before going into a sensitive subject. I could also avoid talking about these things, but it’s so pivotal and defining of me, this music and my experience and is the whole point of the video, to explain where I’ve come from and the journey this music has put me on, so would feel less authentic if I left out these details, as hard as it might be to talk about. 

Really, I should be talking to a therapist about my issues, but money is tight, as it always is, so I am simply having to make do for now.

  The Third take went much better overall, and I feel the story arc is more considered after making some notes (insert notes) to keep me on track when I inevitably lose my train of thought. Aside from the lighting being a little darker than I had wanted, a result of the sun moving along beyond the gap I had left for it through the curtains, the main shot turned out pretty well considering the limitations of my equipment, which we will get onto the full extent of in a moment. I'm thinking the shot can be brightened somewhat in post, a job that I was forced to pass over to anyone that I knew who could do the job of editing the footage. I tried originally but with my computer not even having a dedicated graphics card it makes video editing beyond a certain point almost impossible, the program crashing, or failing to run properly making playback jiggery and editing mostly guess work. For the scope that this video was turning out to be just from compiling all the footage, I knew I wasn't even going to be able to have all of the raw data in one place to even think about editing it all together. 

After much consideration, and trial of trying to get at least a rough version down so I had something to show another video editor, I was forced to elicit help from my wider circle of contacts to get the job done. 

I do normally rely on others for the video side of things, especially when it comes to making something of a certain level and quality. The live session needed to be done by people who knew what they were doing, and the same was for the GuitarBreaks video I submitted in 2nd year and the later videos for that year's summatives. Aside from the Ice Warm charity single trailer and a music video I tried to put together (and suffered the same fate I did when trying to mix this) I haven't ever been able to complete a video that required putting audio to video that was longer than a few seconds. It’s all pointing to needing to upgrade my PC with a decent graphics card to even think about pulling stuff like this off in future on my own, which for how low budget it actually is, pains me to have to ask someone and pay them to get video edited. 

I'm sure I will get a decent rate, but the idea is to be self reliant, and without the income and willingness to start trying to put another computer right now because my current one physically can't house a graphics card, I’m forced to make another immediate expense for the moment whilst I save for the graphics card, case, and whatever else I might need by that point to have a decent, functioning computer. 

I will also need to familiarise myself with the workings of installing computer parts without supervision, so this will offer a good experience to try my hand at assembling a computer by myself, furthering my self reliance in caring for and maintaining my studio equipment.

If I did have my own means of editing the documentary I could have saved on time and money that I am spending on getting it finished and taught myself/practised more on a video editing program to help me facilitate this kind of job in the future, because for what it ended up being, I could have easily done on my own, and in more detail, to achieve the same level or even a slightly more engaging video.

LICK SERIES EVALUATION

With regards to the Lick Series videos, overall I am happy with the fact I managed to get my head around the process of syncing video and audio, and that my computer could at least handle that. It has prepared and informed me of the process involved with this kind of work and, albeit tedious and still fairly amateurish, with more practice and experience could see myself being able to facilitate videos of this level and better with results.

The camera again feels a little blown out, I think a result of the phone video being blown up on a bigger screen and the lighting at the time of filming not being amazing, despite my best efforts to light it so I could try and under-expose the shot to make it look nice. I settled with brightening the shot going in to help with the lack of light in my room. 

Some of the resolutions look a little off, the on screen tablature and accompanying shot getting stretched a bit too much to fit everything thing on the screen. But it is legible and the videos will include downloads that people will be able to purchase if they want to inspect them in their own guitar tablature website.

Being that the process was so tedious to get my head round, I'm unsure where to improve on in future, feeling that the process is just very tedious and the only way to get better at it is to do it more and stream-line my process.

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